Cousy out as Celtics announcer after 34 years

Comcast SportsNet has bounced Bob Cousy from courtside, ending his 34-year reign as a Celtics broadcaster.

Cousy, 80, began analyzing Celtics games in 1974. After decades of working road games for various Boston television outlets, the Celtics legend joined fellow Holy Cross graduate Tom Heinsohn and Mike Gorman for 10 games in each of the past nine years as part of his consultant contract with the team.

Cousy had planned to return this season as the Celtics defend their 17th NBA championship, but he was not retained for the first full Celtics season under new CSN executive vice president and general manager Bill Bridgen.

Steve Reagan, CSN vice president of programming and operations, informed Cousy on Sept. 18 of the network’s decision to drop him.

“Some low-level executive called me,” Cousy said yesterday from his Worcester home, “and basically said that they decided to do two-man booths and they no longer needed my services. I said thank you very much, have a good year and I hung up on him.”

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Good on Cousy. He deserved better than a phone call like that. Never got to listen to him regularly, but the guy's an institution.

I wish I had a way to listen to all the great sports announcers that I have never heard. My only basis for great announcers are Dave Niehaus and Kevin Calabro, who are both great. But I would love to hear some of the guys that have been doing it for 50 years.

Google and see if you can find older calls, like in the 80s. I mean, he's obviously only been doing a handful of games in the past several years...but (as newspapers will find out) you just can't replace experience and first-hand knowledge.

If you're ever in Springfield, do yourself a favor and check out the old films of Cousy as a player. He played a game we could recognize today-slower, yeah, but the modern game. He was indeed ahead of his time, by about two decades.
They kept Cousy to hold a few old Celtics fans in the years when the team stunk. Now it's good again, so they canned him. Nice guys. Hope their stock options are in the shitter tonight.

If you're ever in Springfield, do yourself a favor and check out the old films of Cousy as a player. He played a game we could recognize today-slower, yeah, but the modern game. He was indeed ahead of his time, by about two decades.
They kept Cousy to hold a few old Celtics fans in the years when the team stunk. Now it's good again, so they canned him. Nice guys. Hope their stock options are in the shitter tonight.

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My father, who grew up in Concord and Quincy during Cousy's salad days in the 50s, will be outraged. As he should be. Geez, you can't give the guy the respect of, to paraphrase another thread, say it to his face?

Very crappy way for Cousy to be let go. He always got really into the games and always made it interesting to watch. His health was an issue, too, so this wasn't completely unexpected. The way the Celtics released him definitely was unexpected. I hope the Celtics honor him to some degree during their season opener.